


Guide

by SleepsWithCoyotes



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 03:28:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6178471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve plays tourist to his old life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guide

**Author's Note:**

> Part of my 2015 Halloween theme - this one is for the haunted house square.

In the last seventy years, the old tenement has gotten a bit of a facelift, and now it has a flophouse chic Steve doesn't know what to make of. The rickety stairs and railings have all been replaced, and there's a fresh coat of paint slapped over new walls that might actually keep the worst of the cold out over the winter. Flowers grow at street level in cinderblock planters set at the foot of the building, but it's like tying a bow on a bulldog. The old place is still just an ugly box with tiny windows, and a collection of marigolds wilting in the late fall chill can't change that.

The apartment he shared with Bucky doesn't even open onto the street anymore, but it's not an apartment anymore, either. He hadn't even known until revisiting old haunts suddenly became vitally important, and once he _did_ know, he'd stayed away out of pure...he isn't sure. Contrariness, maybe, though repugnance is closer to the truth.

They'd turned it into a museum before he'd been even a year in the ice.

It's eight on the nose when he walks into the office. The website and the sign outside say that tours start at nine, but he'd called ahead to arrange a private viewing. He's fairly certain the owners are afraid he's going to sue or demand his belongings back; they've been nothing but accommodating once they realized he really is who he claims to be.

"Captain Rogers," a nervous woman behind a desk greets him, rising from her chair as he enters. The habits of a lifetime tell him that's backwards, but he's learning to deal with modern notions of politeness. "Um, good morning. I'm Sherri Lombard, building manager and curator of the--er, the museum."

The Steven G. Rogers Brooklyn Life Museum. He knows.

He forces a smile, but it's difficult. Her skirt and blouse came straight from a vintage store, her dark hair cut and styled just like Peggy's back in the day, and while he knows it's nothing to do with him, it's mortifying in some way he can't explain. It reminds him of waking up in that room at SHIELD with the wrong baseball game playing on the radio, startled by a young woman trying _so hard_ but just as subtly _off_ as all the rest.

"Thanks for agreeing to meet me here," he says, reaching out to take her hand for a polite shake. Her skin is cool and dry, and she reclaims her hand quickly to rummage through the top drawer of her desk.

"Oh, it's no trouble, Captain," she says, her cheeks going the faintest bit pink. "The overtime is always nice this close to Christmas. We're just coming off our special week of Halloween tours, actually, so--here we go."

She comes up with a set of keys and gestures him to the door with an anxious smile. That she's at least as unsettled as he is is a kind of comfort.

"So," she says as they walk up the stairs, Steve following a step behind her. "I don't actually give the tour myself, but I'm guessing you're not here for that. I was thinking I could just let you in, and you could come back down when you're ready. If you leave before the guide gets here, just lock the place behind you. Would that be all right?"

"It's perfect, ma'am," he says gratefully, relieved he won't have to face the past with an audience. "I...probably won't be long. By the way, I don't think I asked earlier--have you had any regular visitors lately? Or anyone who stands out for any reason?"

The look she casts him over her shoulder is both alarmed and considering; it's not like in the movies where oblivious people spill essential clues the instant that question is asked. "We're on a tour route," she says cautiously, "so there's the regular drivers. Some people at a couple of the nursing homes--there's a seniors discount for the Independence Day and Halloween tours. A couple of girls who like to bring their friends from out of town. Should we be worried?"

"No, ma'am," he says with a sigh, trying to hide his disappointment. "There might be someone trying to...build a profile on me, I guess, but I don't think he's dangerous." He really hopes that's not a lie, but since Bucky left him on the bank of the river, the only people he's harmed have been Hydra, and even that's tapered off recently.

"All right...well...let us know if we can help?" She doesn't look convinced, but his reputation is good for one thing: she gives him the benefit of the doubt.

"Thanks, ma'am. I'll do that."

She gives him a tight, uncertain smile but doesn't hesitate as they reach the top of the stairs, unlocking the door and pushing it open before her. She doesn't start until after the door swings wide, peering in jerkily as if expecting to find an axe murderer waiting just inside. Now he feels embarrassed for a different reason; he hadn't meant to scare her.

Standing on the threshold, he finds he can't quite step inside. The place looks exactly the same, from the ratty old couch to the scuffed Queen Anne chair with its threadbare seat cushion that had been his mother's. The same old table sits in the tiny kitchen area, one wobbly leg evened out by a folded newssheet that has probably become one with the floor after so many years of service. A chipped coffee cup sits in a saucer by the radio, but he knows he didn't leave that out. He cleaned the place up nice before he left, even paid an extra month's rent before shipping out for Camp Lehigh. He may be crazy, but he's not totally irresponsible, and Bucky's things are here too--or at least they were. He'd kept the apartment paid up all through the USO tour, all through the war, just so Bucky would have a place to come back to, whether Steve made it or not.

"So, I'll just...leave you to it," Ms. Lombard says, backing away as the silence grows uncomfortable. He should thank her again, but he can barely breathe past the lump in his throat.

Even after she leaves, it takes him a few minutes before he can force himself to take that last step forward, to walk inside and close the door softly behind him. The place doesn't smell quite right, and it occurs to him belatedly that the air is too fresh. He'd been expecting the musty scent of a house boarded up too long, but instead it seems someone's finally fixed the sticky window between the kitchen area and the bedrooms. It's open a crack, which may be a blessing; it keeps him from sniffing hopefully for a scent that's long gone. The bars on the other side of the glass look undisturbed.

He takes another step away from the door, then another. The postcard of Greta Garbo is gone from the wall, but a print of da Vinci's sketched gears torn from a technical magazine is still there. They probably think it was his. Another step, and he's not looking at the cracked-open door to the bedroom, because he doesn't know what he'll find. People who weren't there don't understand. They see oversights where none exist, see more than there ever was when he'd have given anything to make it real.

If they've added a bed because _of course_ there should be two, he thinks he might just break down, but not for any reason they'll believe. He and Bucky--they'd been poor, that's all. There was no great romance hidden behind outdated notions of propriety, though people keep asking, and it never gets easier to admit that there wasn't. But he'll be damned if anyone plays down what Bucky did for him, all those winters Bucky kept him alive and all the mornings he got up just because Bucky pushed him out first, days when pretending even for Bucky seemed too hard.

He hopes they've left just this one thing untouched, however they choose to explain it away. He hopes like hell they haven't written Bucky out of the tour entirely. He hopes he'll find the courage to look in before he has to leave, because even if there wasn't anything more, he wants to remember Bucky's warmth, his scent, the way he wrapped Steve up with never a second thought for what anyone else would think. He takes another step.

The door comes open at his back, and when he turns to look, the bottom falls out of his world.

It's...Bucky, except in all the ways it _isn't_. The blue eyes fixed on him are wide and awed, plush lips parted in shock. He's got his hair cut just the way it was in 1943, and he's dressed...God, better than Steve's ever seen him, in an immaculate suit perfect for dancing with a sharp trench coat draped over one arm. Bucky had loved dressing up as fine as he could, but the suit's far nicer than anything he could have afforded at the time. He looks like a banker or maybe a mobster. He looks...very good, for someone who isn't real.

"Holy shit," the lookalike says breathlessly. He has the right voice, which would have rattled Steve if Sam hadn't clued him in on the impersonator industry, but his accent's just subtly off. "I thought Sherri was yanking my chain. You're Captain America!"

Steve swallows hard. This...this is... _God_. And here he'd been afraid they'd written Bucky out of his life. "Who are you?" he manages, trying for polite and probably failing. The impostor's eyes soften.

"Who, me?" he asks, the lopsided grin immortalized by wartime footage creeping across his face. "Bucky Barnes...or at least, that's who I'm supposed to be. You looking for Steve? 'Cause he's stepped out--probably off sketching in the park--but he won't mind if you stick around for a bit. So come on in, have a seat," he adds, nodding at the antique chair set at an angle to the couch. "Hey, did you hear about the time he caught a spy with his sketching?"

Steve gets it all at once. "You're the tour guide. You...tell stories about me?"

"All part of the authentic Steve Rogers experience," the impersonator says with a self-conscious grin, holding his arms out so Steve can get a good look at him. He doesn't ask how well he's succeeded, for which Steve is grateful. He looks...he looks good. Other than the awe, the too-smart suit, he looks just like Steve remembers.

"Wow," Steve says for lack of anything better, feeling strangely lightheaded. Sam would say he's freaking out, but he's not sure it's that simple. It's just...a bit too much.

"Yeah. Nice work if you can get it," the impersonator says with a half-shrug and a wry smile.

"How--how long have you been...?"

"Just a few months. It really is pretty easy most days. Sometimes I get folks who want to argue with me, but method acting's all about doing your homework. I could probably tell your stories better than you can," he adds, chin jutting out as the corners of his mouth curl up slyly. "If you'd care to hear one, that is."

Steve shakes his head, swallowing hard. "No. I--hear enough about myself already. But what about you?" Bucky--the imposter--arches a brow. "How are you at telling the Bucky Barnes story?"

The quiet laugh that comes unforced makes him ache. "Oh, I'm aces at that. Thing is, there ain't no such thing as a Bucky story without a Steve. Makes it easy, right?"

"That's--that's not true." Bucky was so much more than some extension of Captain America.

The smirk he gets isn't impressed. "Yeah? You gonna try and tell me there's a Steve story without a Bucky?"

The truth of that hits him like his first sight of this man, a blow that pulls the entire world right out from under him. No one else he's talked to seems to get it, that there wouldn't be a Steve Rogers without a Bucky Barnes, and hearing it now in that tone, from that mouth, is a relief he can't explain.

He still has to argue, because that's what he _does_. His Bucky wouldn't even be surprised.

"Not really. There's just two." The serum, and then the plane. Nothing that happened to him before he met Bucky counts, and he's not sure anything that happened after he woke from the ice does either. He'd been different people both times.

"Well, there you go." The impersonator looks pleased with himself, but it's a smugness that's pure Bucky. Steve can acknowledge that he'd been down on himself too often back then, leaving Bucky to fight tooth and nail to get him to see himself in a better light. Whenever Bucky managed it, he took it as a personal victory, lighting up like Steve had done _him_ a favor.

"I still don't know what I ever did to deserve you," he says without thinking and watches Bucky's expression still.

Oh... _God_.

He can't hear the traffic outside anymore for the roaring in his ears, and his face feels like it's on fire. It's only the truth, and he shouldn't be ashamed of telling the truth--and he isn't. It's the sheer, stupid longing in his voice that nails him to the spot as Bucky's--as this stranger's eyes go kind.

"Hey," he says in Bucky's soft rasp, the way he talks--the way he used to talk--to nervous girls afraid they'd promised too much. Bucky could always tell, never once pressed too far. "It's all right, Steve. Just...have a seat, wouldja? It's okay."

"I--I should--" He should get out of here before he spills any other secrets to the wrong person. Not that he has any intention of spilling them to the right one. They'd never been like that. That Steve was, is...that's his own problem.

"Sit down, punk," Bucky says, serious but smiling, a look he'd learned early on to defuse Steve's pride.

He sits gingerly in his mother's chair, fingers clenching white-knuckled on his knees. His cheeks are still prickling, but...that face, that _tone_. He just wants to see it, hear it, a little longer.

He's not going to ask the tour guide for a name.

The man who looks like Bucky takes a slow, deep breath, teeth scoring his full lower lip as he searches Steve's eyes. Whatever he finds makes him smile. "So," he says, his voice warm and quiet. "You wanted a Bucky Barnes story. I can do that. You remember that time we went on a double date?"

"There were a few of those," Steve says with a dry laugh, feeling a weightless tingle in the pit of his stomach as the rules get changed again. He's Steve this time, not some stranger looking for Steve. This story is for him.

"Yeah, but this one didn't go so well, not at first. We were supposed to take them out--"

"Dancing," Steve offers, remembering that last, disastrous date and too many more like it.

"--only my girl ran into her ex, who turned out to be her friend's current." That rueful grin is so perfect, Steve can almost believe it actually happened. "That sort of killed the evening, so we left the girls to duke it out and came back here instead. Now maybe it was my fault, because I wasn't watching how much you were drinking--"

Oh, God. His face flames hotter, and he knows exactly where this is going, but he can't--

"I wasn't," he says hoarsely. "I wasn't drunk. I knew what I was doing."

"Same here," Bucky says with a strange little smile, sad and fond at once. "And you looked so good in that suit, too good to have the night cut short. So when we got back, I asked you to sit down, right there in that chair, and you listened."

"I always listen to you, Buck," Steve says past the lump in his throat.

"Listen, sure--but this time you did what I asked, even when I got down on my knees."

He closes the distance in three strides, sinking to the floor so gracefully Steve's mouth goes dry. He's so close Steve can feel the heat of him against his legs, more real than any of his fantasies. He tries to imagine what he would have done if the real Bucky had done this, and his cock, already interested, goes half-hard at the thought.

"You looked so surprised," Bucky murmurs, still not touching him. He still has space to get up and leave. "But you looked like you wanted it, and I was tired of holding back. So I asked you to undo your belt."

Steve's hands tremble as he peels them away from his knees, but they move obediently to follow instruction. The soft clink of the buckle sounds too loud to his own ears, but the blue eyes fixed on his don't drop to watch his hands; they stay glued to his face.

"Then I asked you to unfasten your pants."

He shifts a little as the zipper goes down, the chair creaking as he leans back. He's suddenly aware that the door is unlocked, that he has no idea what time it is or how close it is to nine, and he doesn't care. Not when Bucky's looking at him like that, breathless and hungry.

"Yeah," Bucky says, "just like that. You were so good to me, and I wanted to make you feel even better. So I asked you to take your cock out and hold it for me, right at the base."

The chair creaks again, louder this time as he fumbles to obey. He's so hard now that he has to squeeze tight, strangling his dick to keep from coming on the spot. Bucky still hasn't looked down, even as he's leaning closer, breath hot on the head of Steve's cock as he says, "I wanted to taste you so bad."

Steve shudders as Bucky opens his mouth, extending his tongue to trace a slow, wet line up the length of his cock, never losing eye contact. He makes no move to grab hold of Steve, so Steve has to angle himself out to give Bucky more room to work. At first Bucky seems content to just lick at him, curling his tongue around the sides and teasing the frenulum with tiny little flicks, getting him wet all over.

"Buck," Steve pleads, and Bucky doesn't wait a second longer, sliding his mouth down Steve's shaft with a low, desperate groan, his lashes finally fluttering down. "Oh, God, Bucky," Steve moans as his breath catches, lost in wet heat as Bucky hollows his cheeks, pulling back up again. The chair squeaks a warning as Steve tries to lean back for more leverage, his feet planting hard as his thighs tense to thrust. He has to stay still, and it's already killing him to not move.

"That's...you f-felt so good," he stutters as Bucky takes him in again, not certain whether they're still pretending this is just a story from the past or whether the man with his friend's face really cares. 'Good' doesn't half cover the way it feels as Bucky swallows him down, mouth relentless, tongue winding around him on every stroke as if he's something worth savoring. "I--I wanted to put my hands in your hair," he blurts out, taking up the narrative because he has no idea how to ask.

Bucky all but purrs around him, and Steve can't help himself. He expects to feel the stiffness of some sort of product, but Bucky's hair is soft as he threads his fingers through the longer waves on top, trying not to pull. Real, he feels so real, and he's not, but Steve doesn't _care_. At least he can pretend it happened, even if it was a long time ago.

"God, you were so...I wanted you so much," he admits, voice cracking as Bucky's eyes drift up to catch his again. He's dreamed of seeing this, Bucky on his knees with his lips stretched wide around him, but it's the need he sees staring back that breaks him. "You were everything, Buck. Everything."

Blue eyes blink rapidly then close as Bucky leans closer, right hand settling hesitantly on Steve's knee. That one, simple touch is the final straw, and he chokes on the warning he means to give, coming hard. Bucky doesn't let up, milking every drop from him until he's shaking and wrung out, thighs trembling from the tension of trying to remain still.

Sitting back on his heels, Bucky--the Bucky that isn't--hits him again with that lopsided smile he could never resist, torn forever between rueful and fond. "And then you tucked yourself away," he says quietly, "and I never forgot it."

All at once he wants to cry.

"Wait," he says quickly as the actor rises to his feet, so graceful the move must be something he's practiced. His head's such a mess he doesn't know what he's thinking--that he needs to apologize, needs to make things fair, that he doesn't want _whoever_ this is to go. Not yet. He's not ready to be alone. He reaches out just as fast, grabbing the man's left forearm, the one still covered by his coat, and feels--

Hard. Not flesh. It's not flesh under there.

It's metal.

"Bucky?" It comes out nearly soundless, breath deserting him.

Bucky--Jesus, it _is_ Bucky--shifts on the balls of his feet, but he doesn't pull away. "Hey, Steve," he replies, sounding so remarkably himself it's hard to believe he's ever forgotten a thing.

"You--but--what are you doing here?" Steve asks helplessly. He's not even angry; he's just...lost.

Bucky hunches a shoulder--his right--and ducks his head a little. "It was an experiment, I guess. I went to the Smithsonian exhibit, read every book I could get my hands on while I was out there in transit, but none of it felt like _me_. So I got some nice clothes, knocked on Sherri's door, and talked my way into a job." He smiles as he shakes his head, but it's clear he thinks the joke's on him. "I thought...if I came here every day, talked about you and pretended to be Bucky Barnes, maybe...maybe one day I'd actually feel like I'd come home."

"Did you ever?" Steve asks, swallowing hard.

"Yeah," Bucky says with a tiny smile. "Today. It's like I said...there's no such thing as a Bucky without a Steve. Probably should've figured that out before this."

Steve laughs, though he's not even sure what he's laughing at. He grips Bucky's arm more tightly. "Please," he says. "Please come home, Buck. With me."

Bucky nods, hesitant but as good as a promise.

Steve gives his arm a last squeeze and reaches for his right hand, a silent request to be helped to his feet. Bucky pulls him up, but his eyes flicker uncertainly to Steve's still-open fly, skittering just as quickly away. Steve wants to be embarrassed, but all he feels is relief.

"Hey, Buck?"

"Yeah?" Bucky asks roughly, not meeting his gaze.

"I never forgot either," he says, leaning in close, "and I've got so much to tell you when we get home."


End file.
